About 2 hours overdue
As a native New Yorker, I am morally obligated to make a 9/11 post. I just looked back and saw, to my amazement, that despite having this LJ for nearly 6 years, I've never done a proper one before.
I was 10 years old and in 5th grade at the time, and I honestly knew nothing about it until about 1 in the afternoon when our bus coordinator came in to tell me that my dad had come to pick me up. The first thing he did when I saw him was tell me that mom was fine and all the rest of the family was fine, then he told me that two airplanes crashed into the World Trade Towers. I remember coming out of school and seeing the massive cloud of black smoke hanging over lower Manhattan and asking my dad if it was "from the accident" (I didn't know it was a terrorist attack until some time later). When I was watching TV later that night, mom came in and asked if I was watching Nickelodeon (which was really all I watched back then) and told me not to change the channel. I don't remember much about the following days, but even then I could tell that this was a day that was going to live on in history for many many generations.
I realize that I'm very lucky. I didn't know anyone who died in the attacks. Steve's dad was in the south tower when it happened, but he was only on the 2nd floor so he had plenty of time to escape safely. Still, I don't think there are that many degrees of separation between me and people who did loose people (I think my mom said that the son of one of her writer's group friends had been interning at the WTC over the summer and most of the people he'd worked with were killed).
About an hour or so ago, I was walking behind Lowry and found a dead bird. It was just lying there, smack in the middle of potential rowdy-college-kids-on-a-Saturday-night traffic. At first I started to walk away, but something was yanking at my heartstrings. I'd been to the Wayne County Fair earlier today and saw a lot of animals, which made me d'aaaawwwww already, so the idea of this poor thing's lifeless corpse being trampled by frat boys where were stewed to the gills just did not sit well with me at all. So I went into Mom's Truck Stop, grabbed a few napkins, and ran back outside to scoop up the little guy, looking around for a good set of bushes to stick him in so he could rest in peace. Maybe it was just my imagination, but I could've sworn I felt the last of its warmth through my fingers as I was still holding it...
While I was writing the part about my dad coming to get me, the fire alarm went off. How appropriate (don't worry, nothing's actually wrong).
I was 10 years old and in 5th grade at the time, and I honestly knew nothing about it until about 1 in the afternoon when our bus coordinator came in to tell me that my dad had come to pick me up. The first thing he did when I saw him was tell me that mom was fine and all the rest of the family was fine, then he told me that two airplanes crashed into the World Trade Towers. I remember coming out of school and seeing the massive cloud of black smoke hanging over lower Manhattan and asking my dad if it was "from the accident" (I didn't know it was a terrorist attack until some time later). When I was watching TV later that night, mom came in and asked if I was watching Nickelodeon (which was really all I watched back then) and told me not to change the channel. I don't remember much about the following days, but even then I could tell that this was a day that was going to live on in history for many many generations.
I realize that I'm very lucky. I didn't know anyone who died in the attacks. Steve's dad was in the south tower when it happened, but he was only on the 2nd floor so he had plenty of time to escape safely. Still, I don't think there are that many degrees of separation between me and people who did loose people (I think my mom said that the son of one of her writer's group friends had been interning at the WTC over the summer and most of the people he'd worked with were killed).
About an hour or so ago, I was walking behind Lowry and found a dead bird. It was just lying there, smack in the middle of potential rowdy-college-kids-on-a-Saturday-night traffic. At first I started to walk away, but something was yanking at my heartstrings. I'd been to the Wayne County Fair earlier today and saw a lot of animals, which made me d'aaaawwwww already, so the idea of this poor thing's lifeless corpse being trampled by frat boys where were stewed to the gills just did not sit well with me at all. So I went into Mom's Truck Stop, grabbed a few napkins, and ran back outside to scoop up the little guy, looking around for a good set of bushes to stick him in so he could rest in peace. Maybe it was just my imagination, but I could've sworn I felt the last of its warmth through my fingers as I was still holding it...
While I was writing the part about my dad coming to get me, the fire alarm went off. How appropriate (don't worry, nothing's actually wrong).